Tag: connected (10)

Making Connected a Successful Acquisition


Last week we announced the launch of LinkedIn Contacts, a smarter way to stay in touch with your most important relationships, based on the acquisition of Ada and I’s startup Connected by LinkedIn.

The launch received positive feedback not only for being a better way to manage your professional relationships, but equally for being a successful acquisition story.

Lessons Learned from Connected

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As it’s been over a year since the acquisition of Connected by LinkedIn, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the most important lessons I learned as a founder of Connected.

Connected has been by far the most rewarding, successful, and fun startup adventure I’ve had to date, full of experiences I hope to repeat as well as mistakes that I hope to avoid in the future.

An Important User Acquisition Lesson From My Many Hours on YouTube



Those who know me know that outside of software, music is a great passion of mine. But not just any music. More specifically, music from up and coming unsigned artists on YouTube. What excites me about artists at this stage is you see them acoustic and raw, often just a guitar or piano and their own vocals. By following them over time, you also watch them grow in confidence and mature over surprisingly short periods of time. Many of them go on to sign deals with record labels, put on national and international tours, and much more. One of the greatest disruptions YouTube enabled was making it possible for individuals with talent to showcase it online, gain an audience, and become successful without the traditional talent scout approach.

But there is an even more interesting trend that has emerged on YouTube in the last couple of years - that of the collaboration. It’s become popular for up and coming artists on YouTube to collaborate with other such artists on a single recording. The recordings always ends up being richer with the combination of two different artist interpretations. But equally important is the cross-pollination of audiences across both artists. Existing fans of one artist are exposed to the other artist and vice versa, significantly growing the fan base for both. It’s a win-win-win user acquisition strategy for each artist as well as their fans. I know I’ve discovered many new artists in this exact way.

What Motivates Me?

I often get asked what motivates me as an entrepreneur to do what I do. For some it’s fortune, for others it’s fame. But for me, it’s this:

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Seeing the positive impact the software I’ve built has on real people every day. That’s what motivates me. That’s why I do what I do!

My Professional Identity

I recently went through the thought exercise of trying to define my professional identity on the web. When thinking about the various components that make up my professional identity, I thought about it in terms of what I’d like people to know about me and what best represents myself and my work.

Reflections on the Technology Stack for Connected

Given the recent acquisition of Connected by LinkedIn, I thought it would be a great time to reflect on what worked well with our technology stack as well as what I would like to improve going forward.

If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, feel free to review my previous posts where I detail our technology stack and the open source libraries we leverage. In this post I’ll jump right into our learnings.

The Resurgence of LinkedIn

In the wake of LinkedIn’s announcement of reaching 100 million members, I’ve been impressed with the resurgence they have had in the past year. I thought I would showcase some of the recent product innovation from LinkedIn as well as cultural shifts we’ve seen from within the company that have contributed to this growth.

How to Hire Great Engineers for Your Startup

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the latest Startup2Startup on engineering management with Yishan Wong, an early director of engineering at Facebook.

The area we spent the most time discussing, both during the presentation and during the discussion that followed, was how to hire great engineers for your startup. I thought it was a particularly appropriate topic given that I receive weekly requests from colleagues asking me for help on their quest for engineers. So I thought I'd take a moment to post on some of the most actionable take-aways from the discussion.

The imeem Mafia



Last night I read Sarah Lacy's excellent post entitled Inside the DNA of the Facebook Mafia. If you haven't read it yet, you should. It not only catalogues many of the excellent startups that have come out of Facebook, but the emerging patterns amongst the bunch.

It got me thinking about my own experience at my previous startup, imeem. When I think back on imeem, I always felt that we had an incredible group of fascinating, talented, and ambitious people. While we never achieved our ultimate goals at imeem, I was sure many of these same folks would move on to something great afterwards. I told myself to keep a lookout as I was sure many would likely start their own ventures.

And sure enough, about a year since imeem's acquisition by MySpace, more than ten new exciting startups have been founded by the original imeem crew. I thought I'd take a moment to showcase some of them.

Connected: Your Personal Relationship Manager



Today I’m excited to announce the launch of my latest venture, Connected. Connected is a personal relationship manager that brings your contacts and conversations together in one place. It integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Gmail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Voice to make it easier than ever before to stay on top of your most important relationships.